Tom Bedlam

by George Hagen

  “Oh, no, Iris. Peter always said you were a fine girl, and I agree.” Those words haunted Iris. The last thing she wanted was to be a fine girl. “God help me, Papa,” she complained. “What man in Gantrytown will come near me now? I might as well have been buried with him. I'm doomed—doomed!”

  KINGS AND CHARISMATICS

  TOM UNDERSTOOD IRIS'S BURDEN AND GUESSED THAT SHE WOULDN'T have any peace until she left Gantrytown. He was not about to suggest that she go, however. He still missed Charity for she had tempered Margaret's rage. Without Charity to help at mealtimes, Margaret threw food upon the table and often withdrew plates before the family had finished eating. She clearly hated housekeeping and her role as her father's assistant but refused Tom's offers to hire a nurse. She couldn't allow a stranger to replace her mother.

  Charity's next communication would be her last. Instead of a letter, it was a postcard, with the Pendletons' oddly cheerful motto: “PREPARE FOR THE END—REJOICE!”

  “In this mission,” Charity wrote, “we must all act as one, cast aside our doubts, our differences, our conceits.” The tone of her message was far less exuberant than that of the last; in fact, Charity seemed to be describing an internal struggle. She said that the Pendletons were returning to England to focus on their “most urgent mission.”

  Her last words troubled Tom. “Don't be alarmed if you do not hear from me for a while.”

  “Well, no news is good news,” said Iris, thinking of Peter Carnahan's last letter.

  “She's probably in love, Papa.” Margaret was convinced that her sister was enjoying the very pleasures she was denied.

  As the war swept up recruits across the Southern Hemisphere, the Pendletons gathered converts in increasing numbers. New Zealanders, Australians, and South Africans all harkened to the possibility that the Great War was, in fact, God's rallying call. Never before had millions died in a conflict. Perhaps the end was near.

  WHEN JOHN BONNEY paid the Chapel family a social visit, it stretched into a four-hour marathon. Tom and Arthur were confused. They couldn't understand Margaret's suddenly buoyant mood, or the vicar's lack of purpose. Margaret would not let him leave. She peppered him with questions and served him, to Arthur's count, six cups of tea. Lovers in the first stages of attraction speak in harmonic dissonance—echoing and remarking on things that make no sense to anyone else but their intended. The rest of the family looked on, baffled by the tone of conversation, and astonished at the capacity of the man's bladder.

  Iris was first to pick up on the courtship. She caught the vicar stealing a glance at Margaret's figure as she left the room to boil the kettle and surmised a courtship.

  “So, Mr. Bonney,” she said, with calculated innocence, “are you single? Any prospects?”

  “None,” stuttered the vicar.

  “Ah, a free man,” intoned Iris. “Perhaps you don't wish to be so.”

  This caused Margaret to stamp back into the dining room. “That was hardly an appropriate remark to a clergyman, Iris! You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “I was only making conversation,” Iris chirped.

  Margaret glared at her sister, then smiled for the vicar's benefit. “Biscuits?” she inquired, laying a plate before him.

  “Margaret's biscuits are the best,” said Iris, with a saucy wink. “In fact, I composed a limerick about—”

  “God spare us, Iris!” cried Margaret.

  “I like limericks—” began the vicar.

  “Not my sister's—”

  “But surely—”

  “No!”

  Iris watched the exchange between Margaret and the vicar with amusement. “You two make quite a couple. You won't let each other finish a sentence, just like two old ladies who've been living together half their lives.”

  Here, Margaret turned crimson, the vicar stared at his cup, and Tom realized what was happening. It was clearly a painful ordeal for such an angry young woman to feel tenderness. He decided that she deserved the right to proceed without interference; Iris must leave before she said something to shatter the delicate courtship.

  “Iris, there's a production of King Lear this evening. I think you should go. Take Arthur!” Tom ordered.

  “I'll stay at home,” said Iris breezily. “I prefer a good domestic drama.”

  “I'll pay,” insisted her father.

  THE POSTER SAID, “Straight from London's West End,” but the reviews were all at least two years old. The traveling company, the Barber Street Players, claimed to have played King Lear on “three continents” in its mission to bring the Bard to Britannia's farthest outposts. Since Gantry-town had no theaters, the production was staged at the Masonic temple.

  “What's it about?” asked Arthur as they took their seats.

  “The king's gone mad,” explained Iris. “He decides to split his kingdom between his daughters, with the best share going to the daughter who praises him most. The dishonest sisters claim to love him more than life itself, while the honest one admits that part of her heart will always belong to her husband. The king, of course, splits his kingdom between the lying daughters, and the honest daughter gets nothing.”

  Arthur smiled vaguely, realizing why it appealed to his outspoken sister. “What happens to the king?” he asked.

  “He rants and raves while his fool says, ‘I told you so.’”

  “What's the point?” replied Arthur, who had learned from Iris always to expect a point to any story.

  “The point?” She frowned. “There must be a point, mustn't there?” She thought for a moment and finally came to a conclusion. “In order to proceed in life,” she began, “one must act, as Lear does, but a rash judgment can result in tragedy. It's quite terrifying how the most careless action can lead to such trouble.” She thought of her own travails with the Carnahan family. Her spectacles began to turn foggy, so she removed them and gave the lenses a furious rub.

  Arthur put his arm around his sister. At sixteen, he was now several inches taller than she. “Are you all right, Iris?” he inquired.

  “Oh, bugger it all, Piglet, I don't know what's wrong with me!” she wept. “My eyes are waterworks these days. It's a good thing it's dark in here.”

  She locked her arm in his and rubbed her lenses on Arthur's shirtsleeve.

  “Does anybody die in this play?” he asked.

  “Lots of people. It's a tragedy.”

  “Excellent,” Arthur replied.

  When the houselights were dimmed, the entire cast appeared onstage to express a few words of condolence for “our fallen heroes”; then after a rendition of “God Save the King,” the play began.

  Almost as soon as King Lear appeared, Iris felt an all-consuming relief to be burdened only by the troubles of a mad king and his misunderstood daughter. When Tom had first told her that his father had played Lear, Iris had set about learning the play in much the same way that someone might memorize cricket statistics or the values of obscure stamps.

  The production was uneven but moving. The actor playing Lear portrayed a grand, vain, bombastic, and childish man. When his daughters betrayed him, the audience became vocally sympathetic, and some people even hissed at Edmund when he betrayed his stepbrother. But it was in the final scenes that something went wrong.

  The problem was clear: Cordelia was weak and petulant when she should have been ardent and dedicated. Iris became so exasperated with the actress's intonation that she corrected the woman from her seat; during one monologue, the audience was listening to Iris rather than to the Cordelia onstage.

  In the final scene, when Lear was expected to enter carrying his dead daughter, the actor playing the king merely gestured to her in the wings because the actress was fifty pounds heavier than he was. At that moment, Iris issued a contemptuous sigh.

  Nevertheless, the house gave the cast a hearty standing ovation for honoring such a distant colonial outpost with the Bard. Iris, however, reserved her praise for the actor playing Lear.

  When people filed out,
Arthur felt himself tugged towards the stage. “We're going to say hello,” Iris explained.

  “Iris, they'll be furious!”

  Nevertheless, Iris led him onto the stage and meandered through the wings in search of the cast.

  Lear sat on a stool, his white hair and beard putting him, in Arthur's view, on the old side of seventy.

  Iris took a gallant step forward, and a torrent of praise spilled out of her. “I loved everything you did!” she gushed. “Thank you!”

  Arthur was baffled by his sister's gratitude, but the actor took it happily. He removed his beard with a slight wince to reveal a man on the younger side of fifty.

  “Everything?” echoed Lear. He wiped his face with a towel, removing wrinkles that had been drawn on and the grease that had hollowed his cheeks. Then he reached behind his head and removed the white wig to reveal a mop of shaggy brown hair and a face no older than thirty-five.

  “Well, almost everything,” Iris conceded. “Cordelia was a bit off, wasn't she?”

  The man replied archly, “A bit off, you say?”

  “Actually a terrible disappointment,” Iris amended. “I mean, she's supposed to be the voice of reason, isn't she? Not a twit !”

  The actor seemed torn between loyalty to his troupe, and amusement at Iris's nerve. Finally, he chuckled. “You could do it better, I suppose?”

  Iris promptly quoted Cordelia's pivotal words, the words that had lost her her share of Lear's kingdom: “That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry half my love with him, half my care and duty: Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, to love my father all.”

  Arthur watched his sister turn into Cordelia for a few moments and was quite impressed.

  Apparently the actor agreed, because he asked her to repeat the lines, which she did. He looked her up and down, inquired about her weight, then invited her to say the same few lines to the stage manager, a bald fellow named Mr. Spalding, who was upbraiding his two assistants a few yards away.

  “Spalding! I'd like you to hear something,” said the actor.

  The stage manager cursed. Fingers pressed to his temples, he approached and listened to Iris speak her lines. Arthur observed that the actor, whose name on the bill was Gregory Limpkin, now removed his nose, which was made of rubber. He had an odd face, which lacked any defining lines. His age became perplexing, for in his features, he resembled a baby with full pink cheeks and a button nose. The comparison, however, ended at the neck, for he had a small man's frame.

  Upon hearing Iris speak, the stage manager and Mr. Limpkin shared a few words. Then Mr. Spalding asked her how well she knew the play

  “By heart,” Iris replied, and to prove it she delivered Edmund's “excellent foppery of the world” lines.

  Arthur, meanwhile, became distracted by the chaos of the backstage area. The actors were shedding their costumes and turning into normal people, the scenery was being dismantled, and the lighting along the stage extinguished, leaving little wisps of smoke to trail after the footsteps of the crew.

  On the tram home, Iris linked an arm around her brother's. She waited until they had reached halfway before she confessed a secret. “Guess what, Piglet! They've invited me to be their Cordelia.”

  “What? You mean, join the theater?”

  “Well—the company. They go from town to town performing in schools, theaters, churches, and wherever they can find a stage.”

  “What fun,” said Arthur, thinking of them running around in their costumes and the pageantry of Lear's court. It all seemed to merge in his head.

  “Oh, Piglet, it's an awful life,” she sighed. “Lots of traveling. No money. They share lodgings. It's a shabby existence. Certainly no life for a respectable schoolteacher.”

  Arthur saw the thrill in his sister's eyes, and his heart sank. He knew he was about to lose her.

  THE MISSION

  THE CHANGE IN IRIS'S MOOD SIGNALED TO HER FATHER THAT something had happened. He learned more from Arthur and telephoned Dr. Wardour to find out about the Barber Street Players. They were a small, dedicated company that had performed at the Gantrytown Masonic temple several years before. Their production of Lear was booked in three cities in Australia and two in New Zealand. The cast was paid a small but regular salary. William Bedlam would have been envious.

  Secretly Tom attended the play He was surprised and moved to see Iris as Cordelia. She seemed to hold the audience from the moment she walked onstage, and when Lear dismissed her, there were murmurs of disappointment from the seats. Tom fled before the lights went up, but Iris seemed to know that he had been there.

  At breakfast, she told him of her plans.

  He replied soberly: “One daughter takes to the Bible like her grandmother; another to the theater like her grandfather. Please tell me what mistake I made in your upbringing.”

  “Papa, actors can be honorable,” Iris replied.

  “They all disgust me!” cried the doctor.

  Are there not dishonorable doctors?” she replied.

  “How dare you?” her father said in despair.

  Iris removed her spectacles. “Papa, I don't want to hurt you, but I can't stay here. I need to find something to do with my life that is satisfying, not merely appropriate. I'm damned if I'll stay at St. Peter's. I'll die of boredom!”

  Tom looked stricken. “And what if you fail, Iris?”

  “Oh, Papa”—she smiled—“I'm young. I can bear a few slings and arrows.”

  “Iris—” He held his breath.

  “Oh, God, Papa, please don't cry,” she said.

  Tom buried his head in his hands. As Iris packed her books and clothes, he considered Audrey's advice and realized that, as his personal burden was lifted, his investment in the decency of the outside world was now doubled.

  Tom was hiding amid the hibicus when Iris came to say that she was ready to leave. Tom stood and looked at her. “What'll I do without you, Iris? Without your wit, your limericks, your troublemaking?” he asked.

  She smiled. “You'll have Arthur to worry about.”

  At the train station, Tom presented her with a copy of Masterson's Simple Cures to Common Ailments. “There's money between the pages,” he said.

  “I've found it already,” Iris said with a smile.

  “Have fun, Iris,” he said. “And if you're not having fun, please come home.”

  She disappeared into the train, her suitcase trailing clothing, for she had packed quickly.

  Tom walked along the platform, chiding Arthur as they went. “Didn't you try to dissuade her?”

  “Yes,” said Arthur, and then remembered something: “But, Papa, you suggested she see the play”

  Tom frowned. “As usual, I have only myself to blame.”

  Suddenly, a window opened, and Iris's head appeared. Her spectacles were foggy but she smiled and waved. In the next window beside her, another face appeared: a man, with a babyish smile. He nodded pleasantly and gave Tom a brief nod.

  “Good heavens,” Tom said. “The Orfling!”

  “The what?” cried Arthur.

  “The Orfling!” Tom shouted.

  The man in the window grinned, and the train shunted forward as Tom pondered the strange convergence of his past with the lives of his children—first the Pendletons, and now Lear, with the face of the Orfling.

  KING HENRY'S

  ONE MORNING, GAZING INTO THE MIRROR, ARTHUR RECOGNIZED TOM'S features. It was a moment of pride and despair, for though he considered his father a handsome man, Arthur had imagined springing into manhood self-made and unique. Now he realized the curse of procreation— his peers' faces were assuming their parents' aspect. Ernest Wiggers had inherited his father's potato-shaped nose; Wally Hill had become gaunt, and when Arthur met his mother, he could barely tell them apart. Across the dinner table, he stole glances at Tom, tallying his father's best qualities against his weaker ones. He decided he wouldn't mind his father's jawline, but the furtive eyes were to be avoided. It would be satisfying to h
ave a beard like Dr. Tom's, but Arthur didn't like the wiry hairs at his ears.

  “What is it?” his father inquired, his fork in midair.

  “Did you look like your father?” Arthur asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Tom replied and shot Arthur a sympathetic glance.

  “Is he alive?”

  Tom frowned at his plate. “I don't know. We were at odds.”

  “Why?”

  Arthur,” Tom replied, “I hope you don't have the same contempt for your father that I had for mine, but I fear it is inevitable.”

  “Oh, no,” Arthur promised. “I never shall.”

  Margaret, who had been listening without comment, now stole a glance at her brother.

  “It is inevitable—ask your sister,” Tom told him.

  WHEN ARTHUR WASN'T IMPRISONED in a classroom with his knees bobbing helplessly beneath the table, he was marking charts with the advances of the Allied forces. Madame Wardour took to slapping his knee with a ruler when his leg bobbed too much during piano lessons. “I cannot wait for you to grow up,” she remarked after one lesson. “There is nothing more irritating than the restlessness of an adolescent!”

  “I'm seventeen,” Arthur replied. “It's almost over.”

  “Hardly,” she rejoined. “You have ten years of stupidity ahead of you.”

  A boy in Arthur's grammar class, Crockett by name, became popular for passing around a set of racy photographs. They had come from his cousin who lived across the ocean in a wondrous place known as Coney Island where, apparently, American women walked around wearing practically nothing but skintight black swimwear. He charged twopence to boys who wanted to take the grimy, dog-eared photos home for the night and made a substantial fortune. Arthur, however, had seen his sisters in various states of undress, as well as naked women in his father's medical books, and was unimpressed. He cut out some of the more arousing medical pictures, mounted them on cards, and offered them for the same price. Within a day, he was hauled before his headmaster, Mr. Poole. Tom was called to the school and argued with Mr. Poole, in front of Arthur, about the pictures.